ATHENS – The origins of the Bronze Age Minoan and Mycenaean cultures have puzzled archaeologists for more than a century.
According to a study published in Nature, DNA analysis showed that “Minoans and Mycenaeans were genetically similar, having at least three-quarters of their ancestry from the first Neolithic farmers of western Anatolia and the Aegean”. Finally, most of their remainder ancestry was “from ancient populations related to those of Caucasus and Iran”,
However, scientists said that, “the Mycenaeans differed from Minoans in deriving additional ancestry from an ultimate source related to the hunter–gatherers of eastern Europe and Siberia, introduced via a proximal source related to the inhabitants of either the Eurasian steppe or Armenia. Modern Greeks resemble the Mycenaeans, but with some additional dilution of the Early Neolithic ancestry. Our results support the idea of continuity but not isolation in the history of populations of the Aegean, before and after the time of its earliest civilizations”.
According to siencemag.org, the ancient DNA comes from the teeth of 19 people, including 10 Minoans from Crete dating to 2900 B.C.E. to 1700 BCE, four Mycenaeans from the archaeological site at Mycenae and other cemeteries on the Greek mainland dating from 1700 B.C.E. to 1200 B.C.E., as well as five people from other early farming or Bronze Age (5400 B.C.E. to 1340 B.C.E.) cultures in Greece and Turkey.
By comparing 1.2 million letters of genetic code across these genomes to those of 334 other ancient people from around the world and 30 modern Greeks, the researchers were able to study how the individuals were related to each other.
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Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: Andreas Trepte License: CC-BY-SA
Source: sciencemag.org
